Eurocom P5 Pro Review, Taking Devil's Canyon Mobile

Article Index

Introduction and Specifications

As popular as thin and light notebooks have become, there is a place in market for the hulking, desktop replacement machines targeted at power hungry users--like gamers. Sometimes you’re willing to give up a little portability so you can bring a real powerhouse to the next LAN party.

The Eurocom P5 Pro, which is the latest desktop replacement machine to come from the Canadian PC maker, has the kinds of components, features, and expandability that make these systems worth their bulk. But Eurocom also managed to slim the P5 Pro down compared to previous models, making it one of the slimmest, lightest desktop replacement mobile gaming machines we’ve reviewed.

At a time when some custom builders are reducing the component options for their systems, Eurocom is going the other direction. It offers six display choices for the P5 Pro, with resolutions ranging from 1920x1080 to 4K, 3840x2160 screens. Likewise, you have eight processor options, 12 memory options, and an insane number of storage drive options. Oh, and then there are the RAID options, the partitioning options, and the number of operating systems you want to run to consider. It’s good to see a custom builder still putting so many choices on the table for the hardcore choose-your-own-adventure type customers.

The Eurocom P5 Pro model that we took for a spin features a 15.6-inch, 3840x2160 display. Of course, as a desktop replacement, it will potentially be connected to a monitor when it’s sitting on your desk, so the P5 Pro is well-equipped for that situation, too, supporting up to three external 4K displays via its DP and HDMI ports. You can also run your notebook’s display as a fourth monitor, if you so choose.

One feature the P5 Pro’s 4K display doesn’t have is touch sensitivity, which will throw some customers who have grown used to swiping their way through Windows 8.1 for a bit of a loop. (On the other hand, it’s downright gorgeous. I’ll say more about the display on the next page.)

Under the hood is an Intel Core i7-4790K quad-core processor and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M. The GTX 980M has shown up in other desktop replacement machines of late, but you can go with an AMD GPU if you so choose. (Eurocom offers an R9-M290X and a couple FirePros from AMD as well.) Eurocom opted for 16GB of RAM, leaving two open memory slots for a future 16GB upgrade.

Storage is usually tight in notebooks, but that’s not the case with the P5 Pro. Our review model features two 128GB SDDs in RAID-0 to handle Windows 8.1, while another SSD with a whopping 1TB of storage space handles your data.

The P5 Pro’s connectivity capabilities include Gigabit Ethernet and a Killer Wireless-AC 1525 802.11ac adapter. The adapter is designed to lower latency while gaming wirelessly and its claim to fame is that it can squash the effect of bandwidth hogs (like random applications that start updating in the background) while you’re playing.

Now that we have a sense of that the Eurocom P5 Pro has to offer, we’ll take a look at its design.